another way to help!

we have been having an awesome week on the adoption front! saturday we had 2 big fundraisers and both were a HUGE success! we also got our first home study meeting scheduled! it will be may 4th at 530 pm and we are so excited and maybe a little nervous! anyway, back to the task at hand! :)

we have another awesome opportunity for you to partner with us (AND LARA AND NATHAN!!!!) in our adoption journey(s). our incredible and generous daddy was thinking one day and had a vision for a child sized park bench. he called me and told me his plans. when i agreed that it was an awesome idea, he excitedly hung up and called my sis. we are so thankful for his creativity and excitement for bringing his grand babies home!

as i said, our dad designed and built these benches and he is ready and willing to make MORE!! would you like one for a little one in your life? maybe to put in your garden? or to spice up your landscaping? (i should also mention that these babies are STURDY! they do indeed hold adults.) if you would like to help us bring some sweet babies home from the congo-please contact us (me or my sis). the suggested donation is $65. thanks in advance! a sweet little boy we know on his bench. he says "baby bella gave me my bench" but actually his daddy won it for him in a silent auction we had at the tc cherry craft bazaar!

bella's bff modeling the bench at the craft bazaar!

bench in an herb garden.

imagine your little one in the place of leo the lion and polly the pig :)

elsie ann hughes

our 2nd niece made her debut on monday morning. she entered this world at 703 am weighing in at 7 lbs. 8 oz. and she was 21 inches long. sweet elsie ann hughes had a very traumatic delivery and came out with the cord wrapped around her neck which caused quite a scare. after a few quick snuggles from her momma and daddy, elsie was whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit.

as soon as i found out about my dear niece's breathing problems, i quickly texted my small group and a few of my best friends and asked them to begin praying. amanda and andrew did the same. after talking to the nicu doctor and the nicu nurse on monday afternoon, amanda and andrew were pretty certain that they would be spending their time at the hospital without their brand new baby in the room with them and that they would be dismissed at least a day before her. we are confident that because of the prayers of God's people-sweet elsie ann was able to go to her momma's room last night AND she was dismissed at the same time as amanda this afternoon. tonight they are home for the first time as a family of 3 (or 5 if you count the spoiled pups!)

we are already certain that God has big plans for elsie and boy is she a CHAMP! oh, and her momma and daddy. yeah, they are pretty much rockstars too. they handled her stay in the nicu with such courage and grace. i am so so proud of both of them. and i'm a pretty proud aunt too!

today when i got to see her in person for the first time-i, of course, cried! :) God is so good. and you know, even if elsie was spending another night in the nicu tonight-God would still be so good. but we are forever thankful that he chose this route for her life, and that she will be sleeping (hopefully!) in the pack-n-play in her momma and daddy's room at her very first house tonight!

welcome to the family sweet elsie ann. we prayed hard for you--for 2 years! we cried when we found out you were coming. and then we cried when your mommy's water broke. and we prayed for a smooth delivery. and then we cried when we heard you were here. and we cried when we heard of your breathing problems. and we prayed that God would heal you. and He did. and i'm sure we will cry over you many, Many, MANY more times and we will pray for you many, Many, MANY more times. you are such a blessing. and you are really lucky to have one awesome momma and poppa! :)

happy family of 3!
sisters-in-law with their baby girls.

sisters-in-law with their nieces! :)

the difference a year makes

my oh my the difference a year makes. last year on april 15th i photographed a very fussy 1 month old! today i photographed a very wiggly and happy 13 month old. my oh my.

(sorry about the not turned picture. i turned it...but blogger didn't agree.)

our cloth diaper dilemma

so our sweet girl turned one and started walking full time. when she became more mobile, she developed a rash. a really bad rash. each time that it came, we switched to disposables so we could use heavy duty diaper cream and then when it went away, we switched back to cloth. well the rash kept coming back. let me remind you that our girl (whom i love more than i can even begin to describe!) is and always has been high maintenance. (breech, messed up tongue, sensitive skin that reacts to johnsons baby wash/lotion/shampoo, etc.) so i just knew that it was just some cloth diaper thing that we wouldn't be able to recover from. on the third round of rash, i wrote the diaper shops team on facebook. i figured that if i was going to get help, that was the place to start. well a sweet lady named stacey responded almost immediately! she asked which diapers we had in our stash and what detergent we used. after i told her, she said that the same thing had happened to her daughter and it was a reaction to the microfiber in some diapers (some of our diapers have that microfiber, some have no microfiber). so she suggested that we strip our non-microfiber dipes and try using those exclusively. well, wouldn't ya know that it solved our problem! so now, we are exclusively using prefolds (econobum and flip) and 6 bumgenius organic all-in-ones. we are SELLING 10 bumgenius 3.0's and 1 bumgenius 4.0's if you or anyone you know might be interested. we would like to sell them to get a few more prefolds and covers so i don't have to wash every other day :) have any of my other cd-ing friends run into any problems like this?!